Weird thumbnail. Why is the printer pixelated, but the logo is super crisp?
Because the article itself says at some point, maybe multiple times: “whichever Brother printer you want”
Even so, it’s clearly identifiable as a Brother HL2370DW or one of its myriad similar variants.
For whatever reason, it’s intentional (the text says “A blurry photo of a Brother laser printer.”) Maybe just saying any Brother is fine as long as it’s a Brother?
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I like that the AI generated “cons” of the brother printer are just gripes about laser printers in general.
“Also this strikes me as a very lazy reviewer. Which makes him profoundly qualified to review printers”
😂
I might be in the mood to buy a new printer. I have a Brother HL-2070N. And I’ve long since forgotten the admin password.
I can print at my workplace, and there is a library 5 minutes walking distance from my apartment. These huge commercial printing machines are so much better than anything you can buy for your home, and I don’t have to maintain them. I’m very grateful I don’t have to own a printer.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It’s been over a year since I last told you to just buy a Brother laser printer, and that article has fallen down the list of Google search results because I haven’t spent my time loading it up with fake updates every so often to gain the attention of the Google search robot.
Pointing out that incentive structure and the culture that’s developed around it seems to make a lot of people mad, which is also interesting!
Both of them have reliably printed return labels and random forms and pictures for my kid to color for years now, and I have never purchased replacement toner for either one.
Neither has fallen off the WiFi or insisted I sign up for an ink-related hostage situation or required me to consider the ongoing schemes of HP executives who seem determined to make people hate a legendary brand with straightforward cash grabs and weird DRM ideas.
Don’t feel compelled to do it; my only ask is that you make this article go viral by sharing it in faux-outrage that the EIC of The Verge has published an article partially generated by AI, because after the buttons I am going to include a bunch of AI-generated copy from Google’s Gemini in order to pad this thing out.
Brother laser printers are strong contenders, especially for black and white printing needs, but weigh the pros and cons against other options like inkjets before deciding.
The original article contains 428 words, the summary contains 239 words. Saved 44%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Glad to see the perfect Brother laser printer + Linux combo getting a well deserved press attention, again like in 2023 :)
Sorry, the printer of the year is still the 2008 HP 4730mfp. Still going strong 16 years later!
Until HP figures out how to brick it remotely when your credit card expires.
Literally just a bunch of HP goons throwing bricks through windows.
"Introducing HP brick protection program, for a low cost subscription of <whatever we feel like at the time> we will make sure you or your printer aren’t hit with bricks through windows*, you would want that happen would you?
*only specialty HP branded bricks are covered"
I still recommend Brother printers, but some MFC-* models do support/enforce OEM lock-in after firmware updates according to reports. All the info is 2 years old and I so want to be wrong on this. Have they reversed that decision? Firmware update disables 3rd party toner
I just advised a business on a tech proposal, including printers, and the bid quoted one of the lock-in models. Of course it’s a company so toner is a business expense and they arn’t pinching pennies, but the owner is with the us in not supporting this decision. Props to them.
From the title and picture, I thought this was some weird diss on the depicted Brother laser printer and stopped by to defend it. Fortunately it is, instead, tauting the superiority of Brother laser printers.
I own the depicted printer, or one very close to it, and it is a workhorse. Brother laser printers are the way.
Mine is 9 years old, I’ve bought toner for it once, and it shows no signs of age. It also looks pretty identical to the picture, and with its layer of dust, even a little blurry too.
I just use the printer at work.
After being an idiot for 15 years, and repurchasing inkjet printers with their insanely expensive inks and guaranteed to dry out, gunk up, and quit working, I went ahead and bought a Pantum laser from Amazon, it came with a full cartridge good for 1600 B&W prints, and there was a special on for another 1600 B&W cartridge for free, the whole thing printer, two cartridges $99 bucks out the door. Steal. Works like a charm. I have, and have had, no real reason to print in color, I’m not handing out presentations, and mostly the only things I actually print are Amazon return labels sometimes, but whenever I’ve needed to print I no longer worry about the print head clogging up, and it’s like freedom from bondage.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I like my EcoTank. I got it cause we print a decent amount of pictures and laser can’t do even passing quality photos. Having no cartridges to worry about is much less of a hassle than it used to be.
That said, laser is fine for most people.
Epson Ecotank is definitely the least bad option of the non laser printers. Mine still clogs more than I like but it’s the first inkjet I’ve been able to live with. And that’s including the canon ink tank which clogged weekly.
I actually think the Google LLM produced a really good summary of trade-offs. I didn’t choose a laser printer because it’s more expensive and larger and I don’t print very often. I got the Canon TS702, which has AirPrint and cheap knock-off ink available on Amazon. The older Verge article mentioned seeing Brother printers in the background of video calls. You won’t see a printer in my background, it fits in a cabinet. Why would I want a huge appliance that I use once or twice a month sitting on a table top in the background of my video calls?
If you can find an inkjet that removes the ink-racket of the business model, it’s a really good value. The company making the printer maybe even loses money on it. That’s a win in my book.
Infrequent printing is actually a reason to choose laser though. Toner cartridges are already dry but I have had to refill ink enough times due to dried out that the money could have bought three laser printers. That is only partially affected by the “no black print until you replace cyan ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)” thing.
Yeah IDK what they’re talking about, I’ve got a 8yo cartridge in a 19yo printer. When’s the last time you saw an inkjet last that long?
Last July I replaced a 1996 Lexmark BW Laser. Though I think I can fix it.
Current printer is a 2012 HP BW wireless that I “inherited”.
Yeah, but the ink is very inexpensive.
That was the point. I could have bought a laser printer with the money. Instead I got one later and wasted money on e-waste before then.
All printers are bad and the Brother Printers are consistently the least bad.
My Brother was giving a toner end of life message and refusing to print.
I took the toner end cap off via two screws and reset the gear toggle, and now it prints again.
Cool story.
There’s a menu setting to turn that off
Yea, but nah. Went through all that no luck.
Resetting the gear toggle fixed it, though.
I did it, but eventually it didn’t. So I gave in and replaced the toner.
I got nearly 3k prints from the starter cartridge, so not bad. My replacement should get like 25k. Given that I had the original for ~8 years, I don’t think I’ll ever need a B&W printer ever again.
Ah ok mine is newer. I just run the cartridges dry after turning that option off.
Probably. I had to enter a special code, which overrode the block on printing, and that worked for a few hundred prints. But then I couldn’t override it anymore.
Same here. You need to reset the gear under the toner end cover.
Pop the end cover via two or three screws, then rotate the white gear back to 12 o’clock
Ah. I’ll try to remember that when my toner goes out again in like 10 years.
Try it on the old toner if you can fish it out of the trash
Already sent it in to be recycled. Thanks though. :(
It would be fun if there was a menu setting called “turn shitshow off”.
I’ve got 2 brother printers, never had a problem. I’ve used Epson, HP and both were an absolute shitshow to setup
I got an HP because it was remote accessible, and had a scanner with a feed tray as well. It prints maybe 10 pages on a new cartridge. Costs 30 bucks for a new one. 3 dollars a page to print.
Bought a brother LaserPrinter that only prints B&W but at like 2000 pages. HP just does scanning now, nothing else
What makes you say Brother printers are bad? I’ve had no complaints with them at all.
Maybe “bad” is the wrong term. But every printer - Brother included - has its own little set of firmware to maintain and special connection protocols to support. The interface between OS and printers, generally speaking, sucks. Wifi connections are unreliable. Its very easy to get into contention with multiple devices. And that’s for a simple little household printer.
Talk to my IT staff about how much of a pain in the ass commercial printers are. More machines, each machine has to connect to multiple printers, and the software to handle these cases generally sucks. Brother’s are the least-bad, but they’re still annoying to configure and periodically unreliable to access.
I can add that we have two Bother multifunction laser machines at work (in addition to three of the venerable HL-2360’s) and the fucking things will lose scanner association with the PC’s in our office at the drop of a hat, all the time, for no identifiable reason. And there is no way to reassociate a printer with a computer short of uninstalling and reinstalling the driver package, after which point it’ll inevitably cack itself in a week or two anyway.
The things print just fine but getting them to scan is like pulling teeth. Everyone in our office but me is afraid of the scanners on top of the things now, they can never figure out how to make them work, and even when they do it right we invariably found that their computer has magically and silently lost connection with the scanner component – and only the scanner component. The software side of these things is garbage.
The software side of all printers is probably garbage, as you say. For instance, my Canon ImageClass at home scans just fine, but there’s no way to make it do double sided scanning through the sheet feeder by default, or from any preset or option the screen on the printer itself. You have to set up a custom preset via the driver tool on a PC, it can only remember two presets, and you can’t rename them. So you just have to know that “Custom 1” is double-sided-scan-from-sheet-feeder-and-make-it-into-a-pdf. You can set it up to do a different thing in “Custom 2,” and then just fuck you I guess if you ever need to do a third thing.
Etc., etc.
I have a consumer grade Brother and it’s pretty good, but it has stuff I just can’t fix:
- wireless G only - it has Ethernet, so it’s fixable
- scan to PC doesn’t seem to work - I just use a USB drive, so it works
- copies and scans use the built-in display, so if that breaks, I’ll probably be SOL
It’s about as good as a consumer printer gets. I paid $150 or so for it, and it has lasted 8-ish years so far without any issue (I only remember one jam, which took 5s to fix).
But I’d like it so much more if it had open firmware and open schematics. If it did, I could probably fix each of the above issues, as well as implement a ton of cool features. I’d start by making the web page a lot better, making scan to my Linux desktop work, and override the stupid low toner check.
So I’m satisfied, but things could be better.
The industry has made us accept a lot of sub-par configurations, and we need to stop this.
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no more wifi. If you like it, put a cable on it. ACLs get simpler and spooky radio issues become a distant, comical memory.
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Whether it’s PDF or something better, find the body pushing for a common format and give them eyeballs and money. Make printers interchangeable again.
no more wifi. If you like it, put a cable on it.
Hard to run a cable to my laptop a lot of the time. Impossible to do it from a cell phone, and I do periodically like to print a PDF or other small file I’ve got on there. But I agree, wifi complicates things. It certainly shouldn’t be the default option.
Make printers interchangeable again.
A good decision at a technical level, but we all know why monopoly-pursuing private businesses don’t want to go in that direction.
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We got one over a year ago and it’s been nothing but a dumb appliance for us - it just works.
a dumb appliance
This is the goal. Printing is a solved problem, so we should avoid anything overcomplicating it for profit reasons.
I’ve got a Brother laser printer myself last year, and I like the printer, but I’ll agree their software is bit of a hot mess. I used to have an old Canon multi-function laser printer that wasn’t locked to 1st party toner, and their software was much easier to install and use. But it finally broke down after >10 years of moderate use and the new models are reportedly DRMed, so Brother was the only decent option.
?
How new is new?
I have a Canon ImageClass MF733CDW at home that’s maybe six years old and it’ll print with off brand toner just fine. I’ve run nothing but generic/counterfeit toner cartridges in it since I ran out the ones it came with. It did bitch about it on its little screen the first time I installed one, but you can turn that nag off in the options and it never prompted me again.
At work we have one (1) Canon LBP632C that’s probably around a year old, our sole color printer in the building, and it too has no problem with generic toner cartridges. That one’s just a printer, not a multifunction machine.
The only gripe I have with the generic cartridges is that the toner level reporting is not very accurate, but I’ve never found it to be very accurate to begin with so I’m not sure I’m missing out on much.
I think they do (or at least did) put some form of DRM on their toner cartridges, but it is fairly easy to bypass as you mentioned. There was an article about the fact they had to instruct customers how to bypass it due to COVID related chip shortages a while back. https://www.techspot.com/news/92915-canon-printer-owners-get-official-guidance-bypass-printer.html
I did like the quality and longevity of my (very) old Canon MF8350cdn from 2011 - it was a workhorse! But my new(ish) Brother MFCL2710DW has been great so far too. Only time will tell if it lasts as long as the old Canon though.
This appears to be for their business class and workgroup size printers, which makes a little more sense to have some manner of toner DRM in because they’re typically leased or at the very leased serviced under some kind of contract. Sticking a toner cart some bean counter ordered from Wish or whatever in there is probably a nonzero probability of a malfunction (even if it’s just the “colors being wrong”) that’ll result in a complaint from some PHB type who doesn’t know shit about shit, and is thus something the manufacturer would really rather you not do.
Obviously I’d still rather they just not DRM anything at all, but this never applied to their consumer models as far as I can tell.
